This book critically investigates the notion of democracy without demos by unravelling the link that modern history has established between the concepts of democracy and the sovereignty of the people. This task is imposed on us by globalisation.

The individualisation of the subject of rights is the result of the destruction of regimes of special rights of ancient societies by the centralising action of a territorial power. This individualisation, because it implies equality, has created a new form of political subjectivity that has been the driving force of the democratisation of democracies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Democracy and Subjective Rights discusses how asserting itself as the only guarantor of rights, the modern state has also nationalised citizenship. However, the author argues, the legal and judicial monopoly of the nation-state is weakened today by the multiplication and heterogeneity of the powers on which the rights of individuals depend. This situation forces us to denationalise citizenship without sacrificing, however, the specific form of political subjectivity that the individualisation of rights has made possible.